The school project allows both the perception of the meaning of the actor’s own words and the confrontation between what they say and what theu do. Its relation to pupil’attainments is lesseffective than in the case of a technical device created to allow the objectivation of the social reality of school failure. The project is a witness of differences, in the sense that educational logics have also an effect.The analysis of the social discourse is an effective starting point to the observation of thedemocratization process : the elitist secondary schools (or junior high-schools) arethe best ones. The schoolprojects may be distinguished by the choice they madebetween reinforcing technological education, detecting educational difficulties, modernization or optional forms leading to a streaming process. The values which inform these projects can be organized in significatif networks of different types : industrial, compensatory, modernising, elitist or conservatist ones. The study of the school balance according to the type of project highlights the fact that pupil’s achievements are geater, and they repeat less, within the group of projects which reveals lesser implication with the reform objectives, than in the group of projectswith a heightened implication level. Working class children succeed better withinschools having an elitist orientation than in schools having an industrial or a modernizing one. Orientation towards a technological third form are more frequent in modernizing or compensatory schools.No type of secondary school succeeds inreducing the social gap between attainment levels : the conservatist and the industrial ones muliply it by four, the elitist ones seeming to be less injust, as theyonly double it. No project of any type will optimize pupil’s aspiration level : it’s inside industrial and compensatrory schools that pupil’s orientation project reveals a bigger discouragement in frequenting high-school until the last year.